Advanced Reactors

Texas Tech University and Fermi America are now one step closer to realizing their massive vision for the Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in Amarillo, Texas, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the first two parts of its combined license application (COLA) for four Westinghouse AP1000s.

The Tennessee Valley Authority and Houston, Texas–based energy production company Entra1 Energy recently announced the signing of an agreement to collaborate on the deployment of six new nuclear power plants equipped with NuScale small modular reactors.

Eight days after Aalo Atomics released the details of its securing of $100 million in Series B funding, the company announced that it has broken ground on the 50-MWe Aalo-X. Sited in the desert beside Idaho National Laboratory, it will be the company’s first nuclear power plant, and it remains on track to go on line by July 4, 2026.

GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor and the British Rolls-Royce SMR have been downselected by Sweden’s state-owned Vattenfall as it evaluates the construction of new reactors for its Ringhals nuclear power plant site in Sweden.

It was near-certain that more good news was on the horizon for some of the 10 companies recently selected for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. Now, only one week later, one of those companies—Aalo Atomics—has become the first to make a major headline with its announcement that it has secured $100 million in Series B funding.

California-based microreactor developer Radiant Industries has announced the signing of what it calls “the first-ever agreement” to deliver a mass-manufactured nuclear microreactor to a U.S. military base. The contract was signed with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the U.S. Air Force as part of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program.

Fabrication of the reactor core for the 1.5-MW Project Pele demonstration microreactor has begun, according to BWX Technologies. Pele is being developed at the BWXT Innovation Campus in Lynchburg, Va., for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency has published the third edition of the NEA Small Modular Reactor Dashboard, a comprehensive global review of SMR technology that defines criteria for assessing progress in the development of these advanced reactors. The assessments are based on six dimensions of readiness: licensing, siting, financing, supply chain, engagement, and fuel.

A reactor vessel has been installed by Kairos Power for its third Engineering Test Unit (ETU 3.0) at the company’s campus in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

For 2,300 hours, the molten salt pump Shaft Seal Test Facility (SSTF) operated at the University of Michigan’s Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory, according to an article from UM. The large-scale experiment was designed to evaluate shaft seal performance in high-temperature pump systems. Fewer than 10 facilities worldwide have successfully operated fluoride or chloride salts for more than 100 hours using over 10 kilograms of material.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review the Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction permit application for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Clinch River site in Tennessee. The NRC expects to complete its review by December 2026.

Zeldin

In a recent interview on New York radio station 77 WABC, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin talked with host John Catsimatidis about the near-term future of the domestic nuclear industry and the role the EPA will play in the sector.

Catsimatidis kicked off the interview by asking if the U.S. will be able to reach total energy independence. Zeldin responded by saying that decreasing energy dependence on other countries, especially adversaries, was a top priority for him and the Trump administration.

As the U.K. government looks to finalize investment decisions for the construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant this summer, France’s state-owned EDF has announced plans to take a 12.5 percent stake in the project and commit up to £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) in funding.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has whittled down the timeline for reviewing TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in Wyoming. Announcing a new, more aggressive schedule, the NRC said it aims to complete its review by the end of 2025, eight months earlier than originally planned.

SMR developer Arc Clean Technology has signed a memorandum of understanding with Deep Atomic to jointly explore deployment opportunities across North America.

The U.S. Department of Air Force has announced its notice of intent to award advanced nuclear technology company Oklo a contract to pilot a microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.

NuScale earned approval for its “larger” US460 77-MWe small modular reactor plant design, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last week.

The standard design approval (SDA) is a determination by NRC staff that a reactor design meets the agency’s applicable design requirements, and companies can reference it when applying for a license to build and operate the reactor—but it does not ensure license approval from the commission.

The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.^1–3

The Tennessee Valley Authority announced yesterday that it has submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the construction of a GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted Dow’s construction permit application to build an X-energy small modular reactor in Seadrift, Texas.